Nethereal (Soul Cycle Book 1) (39 page)

“Is everything all right?” Nakvin asked.

“There were new people. I came to see.”

Nakvin grasped the young woman's upper arms, holding her firmly but gently. “You're coming with us when this is done,” she said.

Elena bowed her head. “This is my place.”

“Listen to me,” Nakvin said. “You will not end up like that poor lost girl! Things can change, as long as you're alive.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

The words burst from Nakvin’s mouth before she could think. “Because I love you.”

It was Elena who initiated the embrace. The two women stood long in the empty hold, hugging each other close. Nakvin heard only her own steady breathing.

“You never got much affection, did you?” Nakvin asked.

“I had Deim, but it wasn’t like this.”

“No matter how they’ve trapped you,” Nakvin said, “promise me you’ll find a way out.”

“I promise,” Elena said.

Even hell had its temples. The Eight Circle held one such infernal fane, as befit a microcosm of the whole netherworld. The temple stood on the next-to-center ring of a series of concentric ridges dividing a fiery lake. Its main gallery rose six stories above the volcanic ring, each floor surrounded by columns carved in the shapes of devils and the desecrated likenesses of martyrs. A great domed tower surmounted the lower floors, doubling the complex's overall height, which only the baal’s palace surpassed. Wide stone steps ascended from the courtyard to the base of the tower, where an arched entrance yawned.

The building's interior rivaled the
Exodus
for transience. Arcane forces bound by long-vanished makers ruled the arrangement of rooms and halls. Only one chamber had a fixed location: the temple sanctuary below the lofty rotunda. A vast floor of dark blue stone spread out beneath the dome, its edges carved with the signs of long dead constellations. A wide bronze circle occupied the center of the floor. Random spiral patterns scarred its corroded surface, and an irregular hole delving into darkness marred its face.

There Mephistophilis crouched, clad in a brown ascetic’s robe. He spoke despite the prevailing solitude, pausing at times to hear replies from the blackness below.

Someone entered through the tall archway behind the baal. The visitor paused to gaze in awe at the great icon of Thera emblazoned on the curving wall. It resembled the fresco in the forest ruin, except for its far greater size and the five black dots superimposed on the winged woman’s midsection.

“Well come, Despenser,” Mephistophilis said.

“Well met, my liege,” the Fifth baal said, only to realize that his lord
hadn't
addressed him. He still knelt beside the hole in the floor, continuing his whispered conversation.

“Tell us what was said and what was done,” commanded the same voice, and Despenser knew with a sudden shock that it belonged to him. He found himself speechless, struggling to understand what was happening.

The delay was too long for Mephistophilis. Like a master puppeteer, he forced Despenser’s tongue to reveal his mind.

“Ether-runner
Exodus
underway from Fourth Circle to Eighth Circle,” the Fifth baal croaked mechanically. “All cargo confirmed aboard.”

“And the ship's complement?” Mephistophilis forced Despenser to ask. He could have simply read his vassal’s thoughts, but he savored the Fifth baal’s humiliation.

“Crew are half-Gen captain, living-man steersman, human mercenary with displaced soul, and half-human Steersman, daughter of Zebel. All sworn to your service.”

Mephistophilis continued whispering into the hole while goading his subordinate through their schizophrenic conversation. “You only bound four by oath?” he asked through Despenser's lips. “What of the others?”

“Passengers include a number of dead and three semi-animate entities. Both transessed humans still aboard. Kost has left ship to repel Tyrmagan.”

“It is enough,” the Eighth baal said. He released the strings, and Despenser gasped.

Mephistophilis straightened to his full imposing height but kept his back to his vassal. Even he found the goddess’ image entrancing.

“Sire,” Despenser said, overeager to use his voice now that he'd regained command of it, “I should like to suggest the use of more…discreet methods of communication between the two of us in future. Being physically absent from my Circle for even a moment could prove disastrous, as you well know.”

Mephistophilis heard his underling's complaint but said nothing. He knew well that Despenser's absence from his Circle could result in the loss of his lordship, and he couldn't have cared less. Unlike his vassal, The Eighth baal hadn't begun as an artificial stratum grown to hoard its creator's wealth; and he commanded these personal visits to reinforce his superiority.

Mephistophilis had dwelt in hell from the beginning. He was not the great
Nahash
—not even close—but he was perhaps the only servant of the Builders still residing in the Nine Circles.

And soon, the way of the Builders will be open to me.

“Sire, I beg your pardon, but—”

The lord of the Eighth turned. The sight of his face, though half-hidden in the shadows of his cowl, was enough to stop Despenser in mid-sentence. There was nothing visibly off-putting in the Eighth baal’s aspect, which resembled a fine-featured human or Gen. It was attracting his lord’s full scrutiny that chilled the Fifth baal's blood.

Despenser lurked in the shadows beneath the entryway, as he always did if such could be managed. Though he loathed his natural appearance, he knew better than to come before his lord in any other guise. Still, the baal of the Fifth would exploit any available means to conceal himself.

The Circle did its master's bidding almost effortlessly, dispelling the darkness from beneath the arch and revealing the lord of the Fifth in all his grotesquery. Aware that he'd been unmasked, Despenser made no further effort at concealment. He floated a few inches off the floor, a pulsating bag of flesh that constantly folded in upon and flowed out of itself. Eyes and mouths of varying colors, shapes, and sizes continually bloomed upon and submerged beneath his doughy surface.

Mephistophilis felt the lesser baal's shame and smiled. “Begone to your mire of forgotten trifles,” he said. Though the words issued from the Eighth baal's mouth, Despenser knew the voice as his own—the seductive inner call that bids one to indulge his worst nature. The baal of the Fifth had surrendered to its power long before he'd served Mephistophilis. Viscous yellow tears welled in the living vault’s thousand shifting eyes.

Already weary of Despenser's pain, Mephistophilis made the slightest exertion of his will. One moment, the odious amoeba was dripping in his doorway; the next it was gone.

Blessed solitude returned. The lord of the Eighth Circle threw his head back and raised his arms high. He inhaled deeply, smelling the temple’s damp, rotten stone. This was the seminal moment—the prelude to mighty deeds. Mephistophilis resolved to savor that sweetness till the ship arrived.

Jaren ran his fingers over the vault’s smooth, lined walls and tried to quell his doubts about the thousand stone cubes locked inside. He'd tried to avoid this room, but at last he'd succumbed to the riddle of the strange cargo for which he'd bargained his soul.

“You busy there, boss?” someone asked from the open doorway. The pitch and timbre were Sulaiman's, but the tone and inflection were Teg's.

“No,” Jaren said without turning. “Is there something you need?”

Teg used the question as an excuse to enter. “I owe you an apology for earlier.”

Jaren shrugged. “You literally went through hell. I can't blame you.”

“I could have botched the whole job,” said Teg. “It won't happen again. If I break my promise, go ahead and take me down.”

Jaren’s wave took in Teg’s new body from his steel-shod feet to his yellow hair. “You looking to get out of this?”

“I can live with it,” said Teg, “but there’s something you should know.”

Jaren took one of the cubes from its metal drawer and turned it over in his hand, feeling the stone’s fine grain. “Is this about the secret talk you and Despenser had?”

“He told me some interesting things. Most of it was probably a bluff, but some of it…” Teg’s face darkened as he trailed off.

“What did you want to tell me?” Jaren asked, his voice brusque.

“According to the baal, I caught a foul disease from those demons—three, actually. I'll spare you the details, but I’d have been worse off than this within a month. Despenser said he had a cure, but before he'd give it to me I had to swear a second, special oath.”

“Let me guess,” Jaren said. “You're supposed to kill me if I try to double-cross him.”

Teg shook his head. “Not exactly. I had to swear fealty to Mephistophilis himself; enter his service.” The mercenary gestured at his loose black pants with their red sash. “This is his livery. They threw it in for free.”

Jaren replaced the cube and turned to face Teg. “Looks like they threw in an arm,” he said with a half-smile.

“I just wanted to clear the air,” said Teg.

“All right,” Jaren said. “It's no problem while we're both working for Mephistophilis. We'll sort out the rest as it comes.”

As if in response the lights faded, and the deck pitched hard underfoot.

I can’t believe I’m doing this again,
Nakvin thought as she stood upon the Wheel. A Steersman’s robe facilitated bonding with a ship, and fashioning the necessary glamer in a makeshift crimson smock made her realize how much she’d depended on Magus robe.

At least I didn’t turn inside-out,
Nakvin thought.

Nakvin saw the infernal landscape racing by below; felt the ship’s engines blazing as if the
Exodus
shared her eagerness to leave. The Fourth Circle receded behind her. Arid desert gave way to arctic mountain peaks in an instant, only to be replaced by dark seas that stretched from one horizon to the next.

A comforting presence enveloped Nakvin through the Wheel. She knew immediately that it was Elena. For perhaps the first time in her hellish journey, the Steersman felt at peace.

The
Exodus
breezed through the gate between Circles Four and Five, and Nakvin once more lamented the steep price of her first crossing. The familiar scatter of weed rafts with their rowdy passengers flashed by within seconds. Through the ship’s ever-watchful eye Nakvin saw the bloated dead cease their eternal rioting to mark the ether-runner’s flight with expressionless stares.

The floating islands of rolling, grinding junk came and went. Nakvin saw the inverted cone of Despenser's citadel and somehow knew that he wasn’t home.

Nakvin frowned. The demon lord's absence begged troubling questions. Setting her fears aside, she flew past the outlying garbage islands and over the open waves beyond.

The next gate was close. Nakvin could sense it, though no visible sign marked its presence. The Steersman extended her will into the colorless skies ahead. The gate responded to her mental touch like a flower unfolding for the sun. Far ahead, visible only through the ship's great eye, a wide green shore crested the horizon.

Instead of serenity, the Wheel channeled agonized shock. The
Exodus
shuddered from its black pyramid of a stern to the baleful green eye in its bow. Nakvin had a vision of that eye opening on a hideous reptilian pupil, but the Wheel went dark under her feet, and she was falling.

The sudden loss of her connection to the ship reduced Nakvin to staring numbly through the bridge window at the verdant hills rushing up to meet her.

Drawing upon decades of experience, she slid from the Wheel and hit the deck.

The crash sent Deim sprawling against the cabin wall. When the groaning and shaking finally stopped, his room lay canted at a shallow angle. Though opposed by gravity, the steersman was up and out his tilted door in an instant.

The vessel had come to rest with its bow pitched forward and to starboard, turning Deim's frenzied race through the hall into an uphill climb. Knowing that the pain he’d woken to was Elena’s drove all other thoughts from his mind. The young steersman scrambled onward, plunging into the dark heart of the
Exodus
.

Jaren and Teg sat on either side of a steeply pitched hallway, straddling a pair of door frames. They used the brief respite to smooth out rumpled clothing and tend bruises. Jaren was so busy binding a cut on his bicep that he nearly missed Deim climbing past him.

“You see that?” Teg asked.

Jaren's brows formed a deep crease above his nose. “I don't think he even noticed us.” Jaren touched the blue stone at his hear. “Captain to bridge,” he said. “Nakvin, please respond.”

There was no answer.

“The sending must be down,” said Teg. “You want to head for the bridge?”

Jaren jabbed a thumb in the direction that Deim had gone. “We follow him,” he said.

Deim’s trail ended at the open engine room hatch. Rose-colored light seeped into the corridor, along with the electric smell of ether.

“Why am I not surprised?” Jaren wondered aloud.

“Because Deim follows Elena like a lost puppy?” ventured Teg.